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Thread: Attitude Adjuster (Beetleweight)

  1. #31

  2. #32
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    For the small things, I tend to use the aluminium oxide grinding rotary bit (the pink stone), which is just coarse enough for steel (which I've used on The Honey Badger). For Titanium, I'd possibly experiment with the same bit, using a coarser bit of it is required. I've not worked with Titanium but I understand the sparks can be hazardous to health so the usual precaution of a face mask and eye protection.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  3. #33
    My previous update was a few days before the Euros. In that time I had to put both wheels on, finish the weapon, and generally prepare for the competition. I had never driven it, so I tried it as soon as the wheels were on. Unfortunately I found the wheels had virtually no grip, and the pinion in the brushless motor almost immediately came loose. I epoxied the pinion back on and crossed my fingers. A couple of late nights to make some last minute changes, and an afternoon of cutting bits of polycarbonate to make spares, and I was ready to make the drive to Marlow.

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    The drive took 7 hours, but I was as ready for the competition as I would ever be. I was nervous, but my main goal was to not embarrass myself.

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    And then we were at the competition! I got there early and set up in the room next to a computer. I passed safety without trouble. I'd drilled a hole in the weapon bulkhead for a locking bar, I'd made sharp edge protection out of cardboard and duct tape, and I'd verified the failsafe behaviour. I then went and had a look around everyone's robots. I was really wowed by how friendly, welcoming and helpful everyone was. It was especially great seeing Michael (Ocracoke), and thanking him in person for all the help and advice on this forum.

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    The draw came out and as a coincidence my first ever battle was against Michael with Shu!. I powered up for the first time, shaking with nerves. I tried the weapon and it worked, but then disaster struck and the axe wouldn't retract. Michael offered to let me fix it, but I knew it would require taking the weapon apart to fix so I accepted it. I'm happy to say that I won, even without the weapon. The robot was very fast and powerful but uncontrollable and the wedge was too low so it kept catching on the uneven floor. After a near-miss, almost driving into the pit, it appeared that I had damaged Shu!'s wheel and Michael tapped out. So I'd won my first battle! But I had work to do to get battle-ready for the next fight.

    After I got back to the pits I discovered that the axe wasn't working because I hadn't threadlocked the Fingertech pulley and so it was loose. After taking it apart to threadlock it, I then turned my attention to the drive. The pinion gear had come loose again, so the motor was turning but the wheel wasn't. I replaced the motor with my spare, and put everything back together. On the radio I had set the limit to about 70% on the drive already, but Michael gave me some further tips on setting up expo on my DX6i.

    I discovered second round battle was against Inertia 2 and Drizzle, made by the team that made Tauron and Monsoon. Being a keen Battlebots fan, I was both nervous and excited to go against such a scary looking machine. What resulted was a great fight, that could've gone better for me but was a great experience.



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    Overall, I was really please with how the robot performed in the fight. I got a few "GOOD HITS" with the axe, including stopping the spinner of I2, and the robot was more controllable with the exponential rate set up on the radio so I got a few good attacks. The battle ended for me when Drizzle hit the side and shattered my polycarb top panel, leaving the receiver hanging out. I tapped out after that, because I didn't want to risk any more expensive damage.

    When I got it back to the pits I assessed the damage. The drive pinion came loose again in the motor that I repaired the day before, so I lost drive in one side again. looks like Drizzle hit the wrong place on the side and cracked the polycarb, which caused it to go through the bolt. The 3d printed bracket also broke, and the panel shattered at the back, again at the bolt hole. I think a washer would have helped on the bolts. I was pleased by how the 5mm HDPE wheel guard tanked the hits, and how the 10mm bulkhead also held up, though Drizzle also got one of the wood screws that attach the sides to the front and bent the head of the screw.

    That was it for the day for me. I considered using the backup brushed motors I had brought with me and fighting in some whiteboard battles, I didn't in the end. I also didn't fancy the rumble at the end, since I want to iterate on Attitude Adjuster for next year. I have some ideas around replacing the motor shafts with shafts from the brushed donor motors to fix the loose pinions, increasing the power of the hammer by using a bigger motor, and finally by making the footprint of the robot smaller, as there was a lot of wasted space when I moved to brushless.

    I've taken a break from the robot over the last few weeks to focus on other things, so it is still in bits after the Euros. I'm going to give a small talk at work because everyone has been asking about it, and I've been showing everyone the video. I plan to put it back together with the more reliable but heavy brushed 1000rpm motors for demo purposes to give people at work a shot of driving.

    It was a great experience, I met a lot of great people and I achieved my aim of not embarrassing myself. Will see everyone next year! Hopefully I might even make it to another competition before the Euros.
    Last edited by scott; 10th November 2018 at 23:51.

  4. #34
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Great to see you as well, glad I was able to help out with your robot during the Euro championship! Hopefully we'll have another match soon with a rebuilt Shu!.
    Team Kaizen - Build Diary for all the robots

    AW: Amai, Ikari, Lafiel, Osu, Ramu
    BW: Shu!, The Honey Badger
    FW: Azriel
    MW: Jibril, Kaizen

  5. #35
    So cool to meet you (and fight you) at UWE, Scott! Glad to know my ramblings can be inspiring

    Any upgrades planned for the future?

  6. #36
    Likewise Greg! Your diary was one of my most read bookmarks. The interlocking method definitely adds strength and rigidity.

    At UWE bot brawl I was happy with some parts of the bot and less happy with others. Due to time constraints before the event I focused on fixing the things that went wrong at the Euros - the drive and the top armour mounting.

    I reverted back to the standard 25mm brushed gearmotors to replace the brushless drive, as I had problems in both fights with pinions coming off at the euros and leaving the drive incapacitated one one side, and I increased the diameter of the Fingertech tyres to give a bit more ground clearance, which prevented the bot from bottoming out on the arena. I also rounded off the corners of the wedge to make it less likely to catch on the floor, which was also helped by work done on the arena before the event.

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    I also used washers on the screws in the polycarb of the top panel, to repeat the incident where Drizzle ripped the top panel off and pulled the polycarb through the screw. I also replaced the 3d printed mount that shattered with a bit of homemade aluminium nutstrip. I extended the wheelguard to protect the screws that attach the sides to the front, as they were another victim of Drizzle. That paid off, as that area suffered a hit by Wee that would've done hit the same screw that Drizzle hit

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    Areas for improvement are the weapon, the front armour and the drive. The axe stopped working in all fights This caused it to lose to Sir Lance-A-Frog when I was unable to self-right, and to Crabsolutely Clawful when I lost the judge's decision

    It's currently using a DYS brushless motor attached to a 25mm gearbox, and the axe strips the gears. Probably not helped by me turning the power up to 100% instead of 80% on the transmitter, and by using a drive ESC which has braking enabled. It's a design flaw as I also stripped my spare.

    I'm going to work on both increasing the power of the weapon and improving the reliability. I have a Propdrive outrunner which I'm looking at gearing options for, and a drill motor on order. I'll try and do some sort of v1.5 of the current chassis, but I also need to lose a lot of weight from it. The chassis is designed around a long battery and Sabertooth, so there's scope to make it a bit smaller.

    The front armour did its job by taking a hit from a dying Rev 3 in the gladiator, but it's only 1.2mm grade 5, and after I saw what some of the spinners did to the 2mm of others' bots, I feel it needs beefed up. The bot as it is is pretty wide, so I could probably cut it down or optimise it.

    The drive was reliable this time, as it was mobile at the end of all fights unlike last time, however there was no pushing power. The wheels are narrow Fingertech hubs, and would spin as soon as I got under an opponent. Mark Leigh from K2 gave me a tip of using liquid latex on the wheels to give a little more grip. The ideal would be to go 4wd by printing some hubs and casting my own tyres like Saw Loser and Flick, but I'll see how the liquid latex goes first.

    Speaking of Flick, Tom kindly ran a giveaway on his build video for Flick, and I won the draw, so it is currently sitting in my spare room waiting for some attention! My plans are to get it running by fixing the side of the drive that isn't working, and putting some form of titanium on the front so that it can run in a non-spinner whiteboard.

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    In terms of the actual event - it started badly when I didn't read the details properly and went to the wrong students' union in Bristol, going to Bristol University instead of UWE, doh! Luckily for once in my life I was early, so I had enough time to get to UWE. I was sharing a table with Tweedy, who I knew from the famous Battlebots fight with IceWave. He was really nice, and helped me when I had radio interference issues just after safety.

    My first fight was against Sir Lance-A-Frog and Koffin. Unfortunately Koffin were having issues with being front-heavy so were unable to drive properly, so Lance-A-Frog and I battled between ourselves. I got a few good hits on Lance-A-Frog with the axe, and we used Koffin's spinner as an arena hazard. The axe then stopped working, so when Lance-A-Frog outdrove me and flipped Attitude Adjuster over against the wall I was unable to self right. However, it was a very good fight and Nick is a great guy and driver.

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    The redemption battle was against Crabsolutely Clawful, a bot with giant crab claws. The fight started well for me, with a few bonks being delivered to the top of Crab, but due to the awkward shape of Crab and Joe's superior driving, I was unable to get around to the side of it. Then I saw as the hammer started to slowly die as it stripped the gears in the gearbox. The fight went to the judges, who ruled in favour of Crabsolutely Clawful as it controlled the fight and my axe died. However, I did manage to pop off one of the googly eyes, so I count that as a small victory.

    IMG_0586.jpg

    I was then out of the main competition, but Joe helped me by setting up a whiteboard tag team battle with Attitude Adjuster and Anxt vs WeeWoo and Rest in Pieces, two axebots vs two clusterbots! Greg and Cosmin used this opportunity to test out the new WeeWoo, which looked very potent. I was really looking forward to teaming up with Anxt, it was one of my favourites from Bugglebots and I picked Ralf's brain about almost every aspect of it. As expected, the match was chaotic and fun, with robots everywhere! Even though I replaced the axe motor with a spare, it stopped working again quickly. Wee got a couple of good hits in, which went through the wheelguard and took a chunk out of the baseplate, but no major damage, and then both Anxt and Attitude Adjuster were dispatched in the pit.

    Finally there was the Gladiator battle, where every robot that was still running was put in the arena for a total of about 22! I knew the axe was unreliable, so my strategy was to stay out of the way of the scary spinners, use other robots as a shield and to not use the axe. I achieved the first two but couldn't resist trying the axe, which failed after a single hit and was left sticking out of the front of the bot. It took a hit from a drum spinner, I think, which reset it so I could use the wedge, but also took a chunk out of the 2mm titanium axe head. The other parts of my strategy worked well, and I was in the final three against Rev 3 and WideBoi. However, the lack of traction meant I was unable to push WideBoi into the bit, and then I drove in myself! Wideboi was the winner, and Shakey got a prize on his birthday!

    So to sum up - the drive was in a place where I was happy with it, and now I need to sort out traction and making the axe more scary and reliable!

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  7. #37
    McMullet
    Guest
    That was a great write up Scott, good luck with the next stage.

    The gladiator fight at UWE looked like absolute bedlam...

  8. #38

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